A post about my dog.
Leo's been having some trouble in obedience classes. He's great practicing at home or at the park, but when we've been in class he's stubborn and squirrely and completely distracted. It's frustrating, but I'm ok with it because he's still very young and I don't really care how he acts in class as long as he behaves at home.
Anyway, yesterday was our last night in the basic class. They had us do a review of all the things we had learned, a sort of final exam, and I braced myself for the inevitable appearance of psycho dog. As soon as we started heeling he did his usual excited jumping around, but then he settled in and heeled like a pro. He's even started to listen to the instructor. When she calls out "right turn!" he'll react faster than I do and bump me to the right. If she calls out "about turn!" he'll cut in front of me. Not that pushing me around is technically correct heeling, but it's progress.
So then we worked on come and front a little bit, which he has down. Then we worked on a finish from a front which starts with your dog sitting in front of you facing you. When you tell him to heel he walks to your left, turns around, and sits on your left facing the same direction as you. A little challenging, but I figured it wouldn't be too tough. My dog's smart.
So they teach you to do this by grabbing your dog's collar and basically dragging him where you want him to go. Leo has issues with being dragged around by his collar, so in the past the exercise would go like this. I say heel and calmly reach for his collar, he senses something's up so he shifts all his weight to his hindquarters and starts going limp (I call this the toddler maneuver). I grab his collar and start dragging him around and he starts gnawing on my hands or the leash or my clothing, whatever he can get his mouth on. By this time I'm too engrossed in my own dog to look, but I'm imagining all the other dogs calmly sitting in a perfect heel position while every single human in the class rolls their eyes at me and my dog. I harden my heart and keep dragging and he starts flailing his legs around and rolling on the ground. So now the leash is tangled around all his limbs and I begin the slow process of disentangling everything while simultaneously being chewed on by my own dog. Once he's untangled I make him heel with me in a circle. When I stop he stops next to me and sits. Good dog! Then I wipe the drool off my arms and pretend like nothing happened. What? He's sitting in the right spot, isn't he? Who cares how he got there!
Yeah. That wasn't working out, so I've been teaching him at home with treats and it's actually been going really well. He did it in class last night when I asked (which I really wasn't expecting), so we didn't have to wrestle each other. It was a nice change.
In fact, he did everything really well last night. When I said "down" he hit the deck rather than sniffing the ground, chewing some grass, and then slowly sinking down and carefully hovering so his elbows don't touch the ground and then popping right back up again. When I told him to stay, he held his stay even when the instructor walked past with a squeaky toy. He didn't even break his stay when a bunch of dogs from the off-leash class got loose. He barked and growled, but he stayed where he was. It was amazing, and I was super proud of him.
At the end of the night we got a little diploma and on Sunday we start the next level of classes. He'll probably revert back to psycho dog, but I'm going to allow myself a little glimmer of hope.